Flamboyant, theatrical, exuding ambiguous sexuality, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was one of the seventieth century's most striking figures, experimental in her personality as much as in her prolific writings. Both The Contract and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity are romances which play out the empowering possibilities of disguise or masking for women. The centerpiece of this collection is The Blazing World, the only known Utopian fiction by a seventeenth-century women writer, an inventive and extravagant portrayal of the rise of a woman to absolute power.